It's a goofball of a movie and a throwaway, but it's also completely free of self-import and the slightest hint of sentiment -- a perfect light entertainment that's guaranteed to launch itself as a franchise.

One man's befuddlement is another's awe at the ineffability of time, and from either perspective, this is a spectacle not soon forgotten, even if never understood.

There's little that's conventionally pleasant about the experience, save the satisfaction of having witnessed the novel and the extreme. But that sensation is at the heart of a lot of great art, from Poe to Stravinsky to Picasso to Diane Arbus to NWA. Nöe would likely, with a black-hearted grin, appreciate being ranked with such company.

Mendes has extraordinary gifts, but he has leveled them at the Wheelers like a firing squad. Strangely, he evinced no particular moralizing agenda when making films about the mob or the military. But put ordinary people in his sights and he's venomous. It's unbecoming -- and it should be worked out in private, not in a movie theater.

A middling contender in this summer of gigantoid sequels.

Palo Alto is "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" without the wit; "River's Edge" without the depth. It's like reading a first novel by a talented writer who has something to say but isn't yet sure how to say it.

It’s absolutely charming to be reminded of -- or, in most cases, introduced to -- Berg and her particular genius.

Leonard Whiting, 17, and Olivia Hussey, 16, look right: tender and beautiful. And, as carefully coached, filmed and edited, they perform creditably. [09 Apr 1999]

Filled with vivacity, charm and, yes, beauty.

Although it treads water for the final fifteen or so minutes, the movie is brisk and engaging enough that it still doesn't feel overlong.

It's a crowd-pleasing, artful and convincing movie that just misses being great but nevertheless gratifies.

The highlights of The Cooler -- the portrait of Bernie-as-schlub, the ecstatic union of two losers, the depiction of shadowy old Vegas confronted with its sanitized corporate future -- are superb. You can easily live with the rest to get to them.

It does a splendid job not only of introducing newcomers to a vital artist they might have missed, but of reminding rabid fans of Earle's stripe why they were infected to begin with.

A watchable, even suspenseful portrait of a woman who spends most of the film smoking cigarettes, sitting at typewriters or sparring at dinner parties.

Duplicity is perfectly titled: There isn't a second of this smart, twisty, grown-up thriller in which someone isn't lying, cheating or stealing, often from someone they claim to love.

Despite the rich, atmospheric textures, Norton's artificiality, Watts' unlikability, and a plot comprised of one melodramatic wrinkle after another all contrive to frustrate our empathy.

Sometimes those kinds of movies work (just ask the Duplass brothers) and sometimes they seem like the cast and crew had more fun making them than you do watching them. This one sits somewhere in the middle.

The movie still works as a clever little "Twilight Zone" episode with great production values, and it's an impressively ambitious debut for Barthes.

The film isn't terrible, it's just trying too hard.

Director Tony Richardson and Burton -- and Mary Ure, Claire Bloom and Edith Evans -- show what excitement could be created on paltry budgets in England in the late '50s and early '60s. [30 Sep 2001]

The biggest problems are Solondz's themes of forgiveness and glib, misplaced patriotism.

A fascinating and frustrating film.

It's a film in which complex issues are boiled down to human essences, not so much simplified as dramatized in the very best way.

Comes to be dominated by the acting, and this is an unfortunate fate.

Ullman and May make something intermittently memorable of an otherwise minor film.

William Faulkner's oft-cited quote has rarely been more apt: "The past is never dead. It's not even the past."

Even with the flaws of the final half, The Avengers is grand, brisk fun. It comes tantalizingly close to reaching the level of the very best comic book films of the current generation.

It's a nicely tart gulp of grown-up wit and cynicism -- with, for a change, a cherry on top.

Despite all the camaraderie, natural beauty and exotic weather, though, you couldn't pay me enough to live there, especially not when there's a movie like this to show me what I'm missing.

It's amazing that this deeply evocative tale of courage, nobility and the price of family loyalty is the last serious remake of P.C. Wren's best-known Foreign Legion adventure novel. [27 Aug 1999]

Hardcore might have been confused and crude, but it was never guilty of being tepid, like this film.

Although its three-part structure plays out more like sketch comedy than a fully-cooked story, Lavie's debut is an impressive and entertaining one.

There's drama here, and moments of genuine tension, but there's fun, too, which is the point of a movie like this. To Ratliff's credit, he never lets the considerable craft get in the way.

For those with adventurous tastes and a little extra patience, the 90-year-old's possible swan song (though he evidently is far from fatigued) is rewarding.

There's enough caustic wit, romance and dizzy whimsy to make The Last September, if not deep, at least diverting.

It's a shame director Care didn't take more time with his characters, even making the film a bit longer to deepen the connections between them. Still, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is a keen slice of teen angst and peril.

For most of its running time, How to Make Money Selling Drugs is a cheeky, moderately interesting look behind the curtain of the trade in contraband substances, from the corner dealer to the cartel-topping drug lord.

Arthur is sort of a dull hero, but the grandfather is classic, hilarious Aardman -- a thoroughly British eccentric prone to weird nostalgic/fatalistic utterances.

The big star with the most unexpected chops, though, is Chris Pine, who runs with his Prince Charming role and, along with Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel's Prince, contributes the movie's best musical moment with the duet "Agony."

Written by Charlie Haas, Gremlins 2 is more clever than Gremlins, and Dante seems to move everything at a much quicker pace here. Perhaps because things are pretty predictable, Dante lingers on little. Much dialogue will be lost to audience laughter. [15 Jun 1990, p.R15]

Filled with personal vignettes and famous-people testimonials, the film has a few too many narrative digressions, but it's a moving portrait of all-too-human personalities and the dogged optimism that keeps them going.

It's fascinating as an offbeat storytelling exercise.

It's ambitious, sharply observed and spectacularly well-acted like so much of Sayles' canon. But it's also overstuffed and underdeveloped.

A hilarious, sad and sometimes-inspiring documentary directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the film is an all-out Tammy valentine -- campy, dramatic and, of course, makeup-smeared. And better than any melodrama you'll see this year.

In trying to make Kalmen's story unique, the film inadvertently exposes him as the most typical sufferer of midlife crises you could imagine.

McGregor is a real charmer, a young Malcolm McDowell with a Scottish lilt; Brain Tufano's photography manages to be both rich and stark at once; Hodge's script has some genuinely arch lines. [03 Mar 1995]

One doesn't want to oversell the film; you could catch it on DVD and regret nothing. But, frankly, in a marketplace that tends toward cranked-up action thrills, it's just nice to watch a level-headed crime movie aimed at actual grown-ups.

Once Greene achieves fame, neither he nor the screenplay quite knows what to do; the first half-hour of Talk to Me is the most fun. But a vibrant feel for its era and a genuine affection for its characters make the whole thing a solid evocation of a time and a life worth remembering.

It starts as clever, but it ends in real feeling.

Combines spareness in plot and dialogue with luxurious, sensual technique in such a way that the craft sometimes overwhelms the slender story.

It's quietly brutal stuff, beautifully acted by Fanning, Englert, Christina Hendricks and a word-twisting Alessandro Nivola.

This compelling piece of historical detective work is, in fact, less about what people have done to the islands than about what living on the islands has done to people.

Richard Linklater's ingenious social comedy is a tour de force, at least in a minor way. [25 Oct. 1991, p.19]

An engaging if not riveting film based on David Benioff's adaptation of his own novel. It's not nearly Lee's best picture, and it's guilty of a few wrong turns that only a confident filmmaker could make, but it's assured and, perhaps more importantly, reassuring.

The fault is not in the stars -- they're fine -- it's in the way they're put through what amounts to emotional overkill.

It's a deeply uneven film that can't decide if it's a satire, a joke, a thriller or a heartstring-tugger, and in dithering in its tone and its aims it ultimately turns out to be none of the above.

Mike Terry's uncompromising fight for his principles makes for a fascinating, beautifully acted study in philosophical tension.

Fair Game, a murky potboiler based on memoirs by both Plame and Wilson, makes a hash of these piquant ingredients.

Yes, a comedy, however dark, about a parent taking advantage of a child's death is a tough sell. But with Williams more restrained and sympathetic than he's been in years (again, faint praise), and a final act that makes up for a ponderous first third, "Dad" shows that it can be done.

Nothing tops the discussions of mortality between Leary and Ram Dass, during which both of these battered but unbowed explorers of reality come off as nothing less than enlightened.

The Drop reminded me of "Killing Them Softly," based on a novel by another Boston crime master, George V. Higgins.

Has its heart someplace worthy. But its head -- not so much.

Sometimes the best way to relate history is to tinker with it and make it feel like a living thing.

Provides adventure and humor in sufficient spoonfuls to make its pro-environment medicine go down smoothly for the target audience of grade-schoolers.

What we've got is a mixed though certainly entertaining bag.

A distancing cynicism has been slathered over the story's maudlin core, with the hope perhaps that between these two conventional extremes resides a genuine emotional truth. That may be the case, but "Wilbur" doesn't quite get to it.

Wright and company do a splendid job of distilling it down to a fresh and entertaining joyride of a film.

it feels as if it is going extra innings, due partly to a present day prologue and epilogue. But the banter stays lively, humor never slumps.

Kazan has a gift for letting you see her think, even when she's perfectly still; the film's title refers to the ferocious trauma happening between Ivy's ears and her silent struggle to keep it in check.

If you're inclined toward women of the smart/sly variety, you'll leave with a massive crush on Hall. You might remember her as Christian Bale's long-suffering wife in "The Prestige." Here, she comes off as a sort of college-aged, raven-tressed, human rights-obsessed Emma Thompson, only cooler.

Director Kim Ji-woon creates a funny, fast-moving pastiche of Spielberg, Woo, Leone and George Miller, but it's really a must-see for its three big action set pieces -- which go on for a million years each and become almost hallucinatory.

The performances are solid, and Juuso has a particular charisma. The actors do a commendable job of revealing unimagined layers to their initially one-note roles.

Engrossing and unusual.

Deeply strange, oddly shimmery movie.

Warmhearted lesson in tolerance.

It's not an art film. The movie is as mainstream as it gets -- which is just fine; the picture is both great fun and gently satirical.

It’s a timely and lively film that reminds us that such phenomena as reality TV, YouTube celebrity and living one’s life 24/7 on Facebook and Twitter aren’t necessarily brand new.

It's neither grounded enough to be genuinely horrifying nor over the top enough to be nastily fun.

Zobel isn't a sadist about all of this as, say, Roman Polanski or David Lynch or Todd Solondz might have been. There's a humanity here, even for the restaurant manager. But that still doesn't make Compliance easy to ingest.

A garish and fascinating little movie that comes bouncing in the wake of Bennett Miller's "Capote" like a yipping puppy trying to keep up with an elegant show dog.

Caro stumbles in a couple ways. By flashing forward throughout the film to scenes of the climactic courtroom showdown, she blunts the story's dramatic impact.

Despite the film's inevitably downbeat tone and occasional repetitiveness, there is that heavenly music to remember -- or to encounter for the first time. You will leave the theater singing, if with a touch of melancholy.

Characters in Bullhead act out of stupidity, greed, anger and vanity; their world is filmed in a washed-out haze; the miserable fortune that devastated young Jacky haunts him ceaselessly still. The film's final notes hint at a state of grace, perhaps, or at least of release. But there's a tautological determinism throughout that suggest otherwise.

There's plenty of freshness and skill here, both in front of the camera and behind it.

The fascinating tale of master forger Mark Landis is especially bizarre, mostly because it doesn't involve the commission of a crime.

You can imagine a better adaptation of The Hunger Games, but you can much more easily imagine a far worse one, and all in all that's not a bad outcome.

A masterfully varied set of images, paces and moods.

With the grounded performances, a pleasant look and feel and the brains to refrain from anything more than a quiet portrait of life, The Housekeeper makes for the sort of well-seasoned meal that's so refreshing in the summertime.

You wouldn't necessarily want to be Valentino, but this sprightly film may make you nostalgic for a life you've never lived.

Prolific documentarian Alex Gibney takes a labyrinthine, detail-laden story and crafts an attention-holding film, polemical without ranting.

All this pain and growth occurs in a story whose plot elements turn over so rapidly that it's hard to track them. One furiously violent episode follows another, each seeming to step on the heels of the one ahead. [29 Dec 1989, p.F09]

A dark, violent film, it has undeniable visual power and sporadic moments of wit. There's quite a bit of fun, but it's not the cheery entertainment you might be hoping for from your favorite porker. [25 Nov 1998, p.D1]

Dramatizes and occasionally overdramatizes Albert's 24-year career. For a while, it's a study of a decent man who puts his life into compartments so he can do terrible deeds.

At 118 minutes it's longer than "The Philadelphia Story" or "Annie Hall" or "When Harry Met Sally" or "500 Days of Summer" or, well, you get it. Working from a script by Dan Fogelman that wasn't overly bright or sharp to begin with, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa dawdle and stretch and repeat themselves, until what should have been light and brisk becomes leaden and overdone.

It's possible for a despicable heart and mind to make great art. And if Gibson hasn't quite done that with Apocalypto, he's nevertheless made an impressive and engrossing film. If you choose out of hand to miss it, which is your right, you'll be missing something.

If this sounds like cheesy melodrama, that's exactly how director Francois Ozon ("Swimming Pool," "8 Women") wants it.

Eventually becomes tedious.

This film is the first to deal with Earp's obsession to kill all Clanton gang survivors after the shootout. Garner is not ideally cast here. [20 Oct 2000]